After a threatened, and later retracted, $500,000 funding cut during this year’s budget cycle, Hartford Public Schools Superintendent Torres-Rodrigeuz revealed at a board of education meeting this past week that funding for the Community Schools program will indeed be scaled back.

Seven of the twelve full-service community schools in Hartford will see their funding cut for a combined total of $140,000.  The seven schools (Parkville, Bellizzi, West Middle, McDonough, Burns, Burr, and MD Fox) are the full-service community schools which are not included in the North Hartford Ascend Pipeline (NHAP) program.  The five NHAP community schools (Weaver, Milner, MLK, SAND, and WISH) will realize a combined total of $775 in reduced funding.  The five non-profits providing community schools services to the 1,031 students from these schools will be paid a total of $2.4 million for the school year 2024-25.

The five non-profits being given contracts under the community schools program were shown last week to charge HPS from $1,000 to $3,000 per student enrolled in the program.  The $140,000 stated cut to the program will affect at least 50 HPS students, which is more than half of what any one school in the program has enrolled in the program.

The five NHAP schools will see virtually no change in funding due to receipt of funds from the Connecticut Children’s Hospital, part of a $30 million, six-year federal grant they received in 2021 to create and implement the NHAP program.  HPS and the local non-profit arm of Catholic Charities of Hartford were chosen by CT Children’s in 2021 to partner in the effort to design and implement the NHAP program.  CT Children’s then takes in federal grant money, sends it to HPS, who in turn funnels it to local non-profits, including Catholic Charities.

Cuts to the non-NHAP member community schools come despite HPS receiving a $2.1 million, 5-year federal community schools grant in February of this year, a grant district leadership chose to spend on three additional central office staffers, rather than use for direct additional student supports as provided by contracted third parties, like Catholic Charities, to the community schools program; “Staff members must report somewhere” stated former HPS cabinet member Nuchette Black-Burke.

Now, the cuts to the program have been and will be related to the loss of COVID relief money for the school year 2024-25.  This may be an indirect cause of the cuts, however, over the last two school years (2022-23, 2023-24) only one contract given to a local non-profit for community schools program services is shown as  being funded directly with COVID relief (ESSER) funds, that contract was for $75,000 to the non-profit Active City for the 2022-23 school year.

The stated goal of the community schools program, is “to meet the identified needs of the schools, students, families, and the community to support the academic success of all students.”  Stated performance indicators for those students enrolled in the program include the number and percentage of students at or above grade level in state math and English assessments.  The superintendent’s contract proposal summary shown last week states that “full-service community schools will need partners that can demonstrate history of effectiveness,” which it is stated that the federal Department of Education requires.  It is stated that the “renewal of contracts will be based on performance.”   It is stated that “applications received for contract renewal considerations were vetted to endure objectives were being addressed.”  It is stated that HPS’ “data and accountability representative” was part of the application review process.  All that being said, no academic data for students enrolled in the community schools program has been revealed during a BOE meeting.

And, Jinelle Hooker, former HPS chief of the community schools project and now being paid under the title of “Acting Director of Strategic Partnerships and Funding Development” (but still none the wiser), stated last week that the district put in place a new tracking system for the students who are enrolled in the program.  Despite the new tracking system, no academic data for students enrolled in the community schools program was revealed during the BOE meeting.

In a discussion about how the outside partner is matched with the needs of the school, Superintendent Torres-Rodriguez stated (don’t laugh), “It all depends on what the data reveals.”  Torres-Rodriguez also took time during the meeting to let the “public” know that she would like to express her gratitude to the community schools partners “for flexibility around performance measures and making sure the performance measures were in alignment with the district’s accountability metrics.”  And yet, not one iota of data concerning academics has been, in at least the past three years, shown to the public or the BOE (if it has been shown to the BOE and those documents are not attached to BoardDocs then the district is in violation of state law) to prove to them that these contracts have been in alignment with any definition of the effective spending of millions of dollars.

The current illegitimate board of education will vote to approve the $2.4 million in community schools contracts during their August 20, 2024 Regular Meeting.